The U.S. Forest Service is proposing to rescind a national policy prohibiting road construction and logging on millions of acres of national forest and grasslands, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Tuesday.
USDA Secretary Brook L. Rollins called the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, often referred to simply as the Roadless Rule, a failure that has frustrated land managers and claims that it is a barrier to wildfire risk reduction.
“For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” Rollins said in a press release. “We filed a proposal to restore authority to local forest managers who know the land best, removing the barriers that have kept them from doing the work the land demands.”
Josh Hicks, conservation campaigns director with the Washington D.C.-based environmental advocacy group the Wilderness Society, disputes that claim.
“If the administration was serious about addressing the wildfire crisis, why would they be dismantling the Forest Service?” Hicks asked.
Since last year, the Forest Service has lost about 6,000 permanent staff to layoffs, buyouts or early retirements according to a report by NPR.
NPR also reported the agency is also undergoing a “massive reorganization,” moving its headquarters to Utah as well as closing or consolidating dozens of regional offices and research facilities.
“Science has shown that with more roads comes more wildfire ignitions, and that’s because something along the lines of 85% of wildfires are started by people,” Hicks said. “Science has shown that fires are four times more likely to ignite alongside a road.”
A recent analysis by the Wilderness Society claims that in Arizona specifically, wildfires are nearly seven times more likely to start near roads than in roadless forests.
According to the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management, 26% of Arizona’s total fires in 2025 were alongside roads.
The Roadless Rule safeguards about 45 million acres of land across the country.
That includes close to 1.2 million acres of “Inventoried Roadless Areas” in Arizona, including parts of the Apache-Sitgreaves, Coconino, Coronado, Kaibab, Prescott and Tonto national forests.
Hicks says when the Roadless Rule was first implemented, the Forest Service conducted extensive outreach across the country. That is not the case with the proposal to rescind the rule.
“Under this Administration, there have been zero public meetings, and the comment period that they’re going to provide to the public to weigh in right now, it’s only 30 days so there’s really not much time,” Hicks said.
A 30-day comment period for the proposal and draft environmental impact statement will be open to the public until Sept. 21.
Representatives from the Forest Service were not immediately available for comment.
